I would have to give that honor to cesium for a couple of reasons. To be perfectly hyperbolic, we owe all of science to cesium, because the global definition of one second has been defined as a certain number of vibrations of a cesium atom (9,192,631,770, to be exact), and without this definition, science as we know it could not exist.
Cesium also has a wonderfully low melting point (like gallium, my second favorite element), and although it's a solid at room temperature, it melts if you hold it in your hand.
But cesium's not done yet! It has the good fortune to be part of the alkali metals group. That means that it (along with sodium, mentioned above) explodes when put into contact with water. Because it's so far down in the group, it offers a bigger boom per gram than sodium does, though. (The product of this explosion is a a strong enough base that you can use it to etch glass - presumably the safety glass you were standing behind before you dropped it in water.)
And for all that, it's got one of the prettiest names in the table - it comes from the Latin for "sky blue", because when it burns, it emits sky blue light in the visible spectrum, among things.
(P.S. - in case my sales pitch convinced anyone to go and buy some cesium for their DIY atomic clock, let me warn you - just one gram costs about the same as my rent for a month. But happy sales hunting!)
Cesium also has a wonderfully low melting point (like gallium, my second favorite element), and although it's a solid at room temperature, it melts if you hold it in your hand.
But cesium's not done yet! It has the good fortune to be part of the alkali metals group. That means that it (along with sodium, mentioned above) explodes when put into contact with water. Because it's so far down in the group, it offers a bigger boom per gram than sodium does, though. (The product of this explosion is a a strong enough base that you can use it to etch glass - presumably the safety glass you were standing behind before you dropped it in water.)
And for all that, it's got one of the prettiest names in the table - it comes from the Latin for "sky blue", because when it burns, it emits sky blue light in the visible spectrum, among things.
(P.S. - in case my sales pitch convinced anyone to go and buy some cesium for their DIY atomic clock, let me warn you - just one gram costs about the same as my rent for a month. But happy sales hunting!)